It’s not just tickets and fees: How Live Nation quietly takes your money at every possible opportunity

The next time you’re at a concert venue or music festival owned or run by Live Nation, take a look at a concession-stand menu. 

At shows across the US, from the Hollywood Palladium to the Governors Ball in New York, you’ll notice a selection of reds and whites from Chateau Ste. Michelle, one of the largest wineries in the country. That’s because it’s Live Nation’s “first ever national wine sponsor.”

The winery has its own 4,300-seat amphitheater that hosts a summer concert series featuring artists like John Legend, Stevie Wonder, and Bob Dylan. It’s managed by Live Nation. Tickets can be purchased only through Ticketmaster, which is run by Live Nation. Food and drink at the concert can be prepurchased through Live Nation Premium, which sells add-on perks for the hundreds of amphitheaters, clubs, and other Live Nation venues. Want a parking pass? You can only get it from Live Nation. 

If you’ve been thirsty at a Live Nation concert, you may have bought a can of Liquid Death water — the exclusive water vendor at hundreds of Live Nation venues — for $7. Live Nation has had an ownership stake in the water brand since 2021.

At Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, in Raleigh, North Carolina, you can buy a gigantic margarita for upwards of $30 from a stand called Bamboo Piranha, which seems like it could be a local business but is actually a trademark owned by Live Nation. The entertainment giant is an investor in several food and beverage brands sold at its venues, including CVT Soft Serve, plant-based-burger company Everything Legendary, and Owen’s Craft Mixers.

If your phone runs out of juice, you can, for a fee, turn to one of the many ChargeFUZE mobile charging kiosks, available at hundreds of its arenas and stadiums, including Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits. Live Nation owns a stake.

If you want to rent a lawn chair at Walnut Creek, that’ll set you back another $20 (no outside lawn chairs allowed, a change Live Nation made in recent years). Once the concert is over, the ease and time it takes for you to get home depends on how much you paid up front. Attendees of an upcoming Tyler Childers show at Walnut Creek have a choice of “premier parking” ($75), reserved parking ($120), “ultra reserved” parking ($150), or “easy out” parking ($175-$200).

Live Nation’s top executives and its biggest critics have long pointed to the company’s self-reinforcing “flywheel” business model, in which it uses the power of its various businesses to lock venues and artists into long-term business deals. But it isn’t apparent to the naked eye just how far reaching the flywheel goes. At every step of the way during the concert experience — from buying the tickets to parking, to charging your phone and having a drink — Live Nation is there to take your money, whether you realize it’s Live Nation doing the taking or not.

Live Nation didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

“Monopolizing” 

The flywheel model sits at the heart of the Justice Department’s ongoing lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster over “monopolizing markets across the live concert industry,” but the fate of that antitrust case is now uncertain under the incoming administration of Donald Trump. Though Trump sees Big Tech companies like Google as his ideological foes, Live Nation doesn’t necessarily fall under that umbrella. 

Both FTC Chair Lina Khan and DOJ Antitrust Chief Jonathan Kanter, whose division is handling the Live Nation lawsuit, will depart when Trump takes office in January. Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for US attorney general, has worked as a lobbyist for a long list of corporate clients that includes General Motors and Amazon. 

“We’re very likely, then, to see a relaxation of antitrust policy,” Don Franzen, an adjunct professor of music and law at UCLA, said. “I’m not even sure this case will continue.” 

Still, there’s a chance the case doesn’t die. Gail Slater, Trump’s recent pick to take over the DOJ’s antitrust division, is viewed as a signal to Wall Street and Big Tech that antitrust enforcement isn’t going away under Trump, though her approach is likely to be different from that of Khan and Kanter. Slater has served as a staff attorney at the FTC, which enforces laws on anticompetitive behavior, even working under Democratic FTC Commissioner Julie Brill at one point. She has also advised Vice President-elect JD Vance on economic policy.

Despite the DOJ suit filed this year, Live Nation spent much of 2024 getting bigger. It put together its second-most-profitable summer ever, just behind last year’s. (The company typically posts losses in the fall and winter quarters and makes money in the two quarters covering April to September.) Its stock has kept going up, too, and it currently sits near all-time highs. Shares of the company have vaulted about 45% so far this year, far outpacing the S&P 500’s roughly 27% rise. 

The company is laser-focused on building new amphitheaters that it owns and operates, effectively cutting out the go-between of an outside venue operator. Live Nation also has more than 120 active applications for trademarks, including for different lines of nonalcoholic beverages (Live Juice, Soundproof, and Nixed), a teriyaki stand, several lines of clothing, a cocktail lounge, and numerous event and festival promoters. 

It has also been building out Venue Nation, its sprawling network of owned and operated venues around the country, and VIP Nation, which focuses on premium perks for concertgoers.

“VIP upgrades have definitely become more common,” Andre Campbell, a talent buyer at Artists Aloud, said. “It’s an additional revenue stream for Live Nation, which costs them very little.”

It isn’t so surprising that it’s all business as usual for the live-concert giant. Departing from the regular business plan could be interpreted as a concession to antitrust regulators. 

“Its pushback, of course, has been that nothing that they’ve done is anticompetitive,” Franzen said. “I would say that they’re going to proceed as business as usual until the court tells them otherwise.”

Independent music venues, which are shrinking in numbers, say the way that Live Nation owns the value chain makes it extremely difficult to compete. They say Live Nation, which owns or operates the vast majority of amphitheaters in the US, manages artists and books artists primarily in their own venues. Advertisers and sponsors flock to it because of its sheer size. 

“It is impossible for any independent venue, festival, or promoter to compete against a vertically integrated monopoly, period,” Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association, said. “Live Nation has been especially effective at using their market power to get brand sponsorships and partnerships that in many cases would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for independent venues to take advantage of. 

“The best thing that the Trump administration can do to ensure the survival of independent venues,” Parker said, “is build on the work that has already been done by Republican state AGs across the country to continue this case.”

Buy local

Earlier this year, Live Nation quietly acquired The Bell House in Brooklyn, New York, a venue known for its up-and-coming acts and modest prices. When The Bell House switched its ticketing system from Eventbrite to Ticketmaster this fall, ticket prices for identical events increased. Tickets to a “Slate” podcast taping, originally priced at $35.45 with fees on Eventbrite, were priced at $37 on Ticketmaster, according to local-events Substack Park Slope Walk. In other cases, ticket prices have stayed the same. For example, tickets to a Sandwiches of History event were still roughly $30 on Ticketmaster. 

It may be too early to tell how the acquisition will truly affect The Bell House’s pricing. It’s also unclear what changes Live Nation has in store for the small community theater — whether that means more national-level acts or renovations. The acquisition of a nearby venue led to a total transformation. The historic Brooklyn Paramount, which Live Nation bought in 2023 and hired a Dutch engineering firm to painstakingly renovate, reopened this spring with new cocktail bars, a VIP lounge, and brand-new seats.

Live Nation has taken a lot of heat for Ticketmaster because of the fees it charges and the technical problems it experiences. But selling higher-margin items like concert T-shirts and premium cocktails is more profitable for Live Nation than the ticketing business, especially when Live Nation is selling its own products. 

Roughly $18.8 billion of the company’s revenue came from its “concerts and venues” division in 2023, compared to just $2.9 billion from ticketing, according to filings. While its profit margin for ticketing is 20%, the margin for VIP seats, food and beverage, and “ancillaries” — parking, insurance, and other upgrades — is 50%. 

“The argument that the DOJ is making is that Live Nation is able to capture these highly profitable, almost sideline revenue sources because of the market power they have, from the control of the venues and the artists and the ticketing,” Franzen said. 

Just four years ago, Live Nation was in a grim state. The pandemic threw the live-events industry into a crisis, and big players like Live Nation and AEG lost out on billions in revenue from ticket sales and sponsorship deals. Live Nation ended 2020 with 84% less revenue year over year. 

But live music’s recovery since then has gone gangbusters. Major headliners like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Bad Bunny, Metallica, Luke Combs, and Ed Sheeran lured legions of fans back to shows in force.

In 2023, a record 81 million fans in North America attended a Live Nation event, more than double the number of fans (38 million) who attended one back in 2013. Last year’s record levels of attendance, sponsorships, and ticket sales, plus expansion in Latin America and Asia, ensured that Live Nation generated $22.7 billion in revenue for the year, up from $11.5 billion in 2019, before the pandemic started. 

Despite the average cost of a concert ticket going up (from about $92 in 2019 to over $127 in 2024, according to Pollstar’s midyear report), attendance is rising every year. Last year was Live Nation’s biggest, with more than 145 million fans attending more than 50,000 events globally. Attendance, revenue, and the number of tickets sold in the first half of 2024 are even higher than last year. 

It was during the pandemic that Live Nation began a strategic shift from leasing venues to owning them. The company owns or controls (either through long-term leases or equity rights) more than 60 of the 100 top amphitheaters in the US, and has several more in the pipeline, both domestically and globally. 

“We’ve always been a venue operator. We lease a lot of venues, the Shoreline Amphitheater down the street or The Fillmore. So it’s in our DNA,” Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino said during a Goldman Sachs conference earlier this year. 

Traditionally, a venue would put out a request for proposal and Live Nation would bid on a contract to lease the property for a time, sometimes up to 20 years, he said. 

“We realized we needed to be in the front end of that development, too. Instead of paying that incredible, huge lease for 20 years, what if we built it?” Rapino said. 

The return on capital for a Live Nation-owned venue was more than 25%, he added.

Live Nation’s growing stronghold on venues gives it power over every aspect of the concert experience. 

The DOJ wrote in its amended complaint filed back in August: “Control over a venue not only confers on Live Nation the ability to dictate whether fans can see a particular artist they love, but in many cases also provides Live Nation control over many aspects of the concert experience and a host of additional revenue streams ranging from sponsorships to food and beverage sales.” 

The company has moved forward with big upgrades to its existing venues, like Northwell Jones Beach Theater in New York and Hayden Homes Amphitheater in Bend, Oregon, adding in additional VIP areas, box seats, and space for food and beverage vendors. These types of upgrades lead to concertgoers spending more. 

Rapino said during an earnings call last year: “We think our amphitheaters are run very well. As I say, they’re run very well like Southwest Airlines. They’re very efficient, and they’ve been great machines to date. But we think we’re seeing when we invest capital on-site, we’re getting 20%, 30% returns on capital when we turn that grassy area into a VIP club, a membership club.” 

On the other end of the spectrum, amphitheaters also allow for the sale of general-admission lawn tickets that are normally the cheapest in the house. But these ticket holders also spend plenty of money on food and drink. 

“We’re seeing high single-digit increases in attendance per show, which is really driven by more lawn tickets being sold,” Rapino said. “The people that you might say are going to be the most price conscious are continuing to spend strongly.”

Fans are spending more at venues than they did before the pandemic, on everything from higher-priced premium concessions to upgrades like Fast Lane entry, according to Live Nation’s figures. In 2019, ancillary per-fan revenue at amphitheaters was $29. By the end of 2023 that figure had jumped to $40, unadjusted for inflation. Fan spending has also gone up at Live Nation’s other venues and events, including festivals, theaters, and clubs. 

If you build it, they will come

Live Nation broke ground this year on a 9,000-seat amphitheater in Birmingham, Alabama, and began work on a 15,000-seat amphitheater in Riverside, Missouri, just outside Kansas City. It also unveiled plans for Rogers Stadium, a 50,000-seat outdoor venue in Toronto set to open next summer. Portland, once the only major US city without a Live Nation venue, recently approved a 3,500-person amphitheater.

“We have had multiple cities reach out knowing about Live Nation’s plans to build a venue here, and warn us that once they own and operate a venue in a town, they tend to start buying up smaller venues and pushing out the competition,” said Renée Muzquiz, director of operations at MusicPortland, which represents independent music venues. “And that has a real cascading negative effect on the rest of the music ecosystem.” 

Muzquiz said she attended a concert at the Hayden Homes Amphitheater, owned by Live Nation, and while she enjoyed the experience, she said she has trouble connecting with the artist at such large venues. 

“It’s more about the theatrics and the lighting and, you know, the expensive food — trying to get there early, because there’s always kind of like a cattle call — versus going to a small venue in Portland, where you can see the expression on the artist’s face.”

Live concerts as luxury experiences have become normalized, with superfans spending thousands to see blockbuster acts like Swift or Beyoncé. A VIP experience, once as simple as a meet and greet with the band and seats with an incredible view, has expanded to include premium memorabilia, preshow exhibitions, and other perks. 

“I’ve definitely noticed that people, especially at large shows like arena and stadium events — and not to sound crass about it — but they’re spending freely,” Andrew Mall, an associate professor of music at Northeastern University, said. “They’re excited about the merchandise and they’re also excited just to have this special night.”

Perhaps the ultimate VIP experience in live music right now is at the Sphere in Vegas, where the promoters are Live Nation and partner Insomniac Entertainment. Tickets to see U2 during the band’s residency at the Sphere ranged from just under $300 to over $2,000. It grossed $84.7 million this year, making it the highest-grossing Vegas residency of the year. Fans who booked their tickets through Vibee, a “destination experiences” platform that Live Nation launched in 2023, could buy packages that included accommodation at The Venetian and concierge services. 

“It really understands the psychology of VIP. People seem to like to feel a little extra special, and if it’s in their means to do so, they’ll usually order up,” said Tony, who asked to use his first name only. He operates the Under Face Value account on X, which documents “pricing inconsistencies and other peculiarities in ticketing.”

Dynamic pricing = you pay more

Many fans have grown accustomed to surge pricing through Ticketmaster’s use of dynamic pricing, which raises prices as demand goes up. Back in August, Oasis fans in the UK spent hours waiting in Ticketmaster’s virtual queues only to find that ticket prices had doubled or even tripled. 

Even though the backlash caused Oasis to opt out of dynamic pricing in the US, many American fans were skeptical they’d see any savings. 

“As long as there’s a way for scalpers to get tickets ahead of fans, I don’t know how we’ll see fair ticket prices,” said Robert Carroll, a TV producer who saw the band live in 2008, the last time they came to the States. Carroll paid $49 plus a $9.90 Ticketmaster service fee to see the band play at the Staples Center. 

Days before presales for Oasis had even opened, thousands of “spec ticket” listings posted by scalpers had appeared on resale platforms like StubHub and Vivid Seats, some priced much higher than face value. Scalpers also hawked access codes on Discord for presales, which Ticketmaster had doled out to a select group of fans who registered in advance. 

Though dynamic ticket pricing wasn’t at play for US sales, many American fans ended up paying for tickets at surge prices. Oasis still chose to participate in Ticketmaster’s “Official Platinum” seating. Artists set the prices for such seats, and they can fluctuate based on supply and demand. If Official Platinum seats don’t sell by a certain date, Ticketmaster will release them and they’ll revert to their original prices. 

Some Oasis fans who bought Official Platinum seats for hundreds of dollars were shocked to learn they didn’t include VIP perks. 

Carroll ended up paying $632 for two presale tickets to see the band play at the Rose Bowl next year, which he said was pretty much what he expected. The longtime fan said he was happy with the seats, and while he wasn’t wild about the inflated prices, they were inevitable. 

“As an adult, it doesn’t bug me that much. But as a parent, it can be hard to explain to your daughter that it’s cheaper to take a two-week trip to Japan than it is to see Taylor Swift once.”

Across the live-events industry, there are signs that fan enthusiasm for some high-priced concert experiences is beginning to fade this year, with well-known artists like The Black Keys and Jennifer Lopez canceling or adjusting their tours amid lackluster ticket sales. 

Numerous festivals in the US, UK, and Australia were canceled this year, and even industry giants like Coachella, Governors Ball, and Lollapalooza saw a notable drop in sales. 

On Monday, Live Nation canceled Sick New World, a one-day music fest in Vegas that featured Metallica and Linkin Park whose cheapest general-admission tickets started at $472. 

Industry journal Hits Daily Double noted that only a third of the venue's more than 60,000 seats had been sold.

Amrita Khalid is a tech and business journalist in Los Angeles who’s written for The Verge, Engadget, and Quartz.